Palm just released a new Treo. Remember that thing?
I was reading through the Wall Street Journal and stumbled across this amazing piece of news: Palm still exists! As proof, the company has released a new Treo.
Remember the Treo?
It used to be the "it" device, the one you just had to have. Now? Well, now it's the device that you get if you've been living in Antarctica and have been talking with penguins for far too long.
Palm's sense of timing hasn't changed. A day after Apple announced that it sold over one million 3G iPhones in its opening weekend (the last iPhone took 74 days to reach that milestone), Palm announced that it had introduced yet another device for the market to ignore.
Now, I'm not suggesting that the Treo is a bad device. I used to swear by mine. But the mobile market is fickle, because consumers are fickle. Gadgets have become disposable: I have two Blackberrys down in my kids' toy chest.
But even they don't want to use them as toys anymore. They want iPhones.
Palm is better off finding niche categories where the iPhone and Blackberry are unlikely to go. Like, um...OK. I can't think of any reason to use one. That's the problem.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
What is the number one request of true Treo fans everywhere.....an update Palm OS....not a new Windows Mobile Treo (are you listening Palm?) Good job on (finally) implementing built-in Wifi and GPS but it's too little too late.................I'm getting me an iPhone.